I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.